


Graft

by Lscholar



Category: Heaven Will Be Mine (Visual Novel), Twig - Wildbow, We Know the Devil (Visual Novel)
Genre: Biopunk, F/F, tags forthcoming!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-15 00:44:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19599139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lscholar/pseuds/Lscholar
Summary: 1921. After the close of the Industrial Age, the Biological Sciences have ushered in a new age of prosperity... for some. Dead men work the factories, hybridized chimeras pull plows, and the people in the streets worry they too will be outmoded by the next advance. And so rebellion ferments in the Crown States.Luna-Terra couldn't care less. She spends her days drinking irresponsible amounts of alcohol and hunting down escaped experiments and serial killers, trying to forget about a past that refuses to let her go. Juniper West has nowhere else to go for help, and she's been told Luna-Terra knows something about what happened to the most important person in her life.If Luna-Terra had known the only woman she's ever loved was still alive, still pulling subtle strings, she wouldn't have taken the case.





	Graft

**Author's Note:**

> cw: homophobia and transphobia, both internalized and external; body horror; Monarchy; substance abuse; unhealthy relationships; abominations of mad science; suicidal mentality.
> 
> Twig provides the setting and some characters you'll meet later; HWBM/WKTD provide our protagonists. If you haven't read the other work(s), this first chapter should help introduce the setting and protagonists for people missing one of those (probably everybody because both are so niche). Let me know if I've overtuned it either way - integration should be smooth.
> 
> I'm excited to finally be releasing this!

Luna-Terra knows the rules.

Wear your hat brim low and your collar high. Keep your hands in your pockets. Walk like you have somewhere to be, so nobody bothers you, but not so urgently that you stand out.

Never ever run. Runners get caught, and without papers you’d get turned over to the Crown or Academy—and with your _unique_ physiology, that would be the end of you.

Passing is never guaranteed, but if you keep your eyes down and your shoulders forward and don’t fuck it up by thinking about it you’ll look like another ant in the anthill, not worth caring about.

It’s early evening. Clarkstown is monochrome wet slate-gray. The coastal fog is heavy and low; a blanket thrown over the city caught on the flat roofs of old-school brick-and-stone buildings, dissolving into rain in its haste to reach the ground.

Curfew approaches. Civilians scurry home, fearful. Even well-to-do ladies shift their feet and keep their monstrous escorts between them and the passersby.

Luna-Terra slides through the drizzle like a curling stone on ice, eyes down; indistinguishable from any other miserable man, woman, or stitched on the lords-forsaken street but for the smoothness of her movement. Sweat beads on her forehead and traces the hard sharp lines of her face down to the corner of her mouth.  
Her tongue flicks out, lizard-like. She tastes salt.

To extend the metaphor: she’s here hunting an ant-lion. The Lord Mayor seems to have taken offense at the idea of a serial killer in his town, and the bounty he’s placed is high enough to draw mercenaries from all over the Crown States.

Luna-Terra can see why. This killer likes taking people apart, leaving the pieces mostly intact in occultish piles. On the night the bounty was posted, the killer vivisected an orphan into a mockery of an anatomical diagram on Clarkestown Academy’s doorstep. Crown and Academies have a symbiotic relationship, Luna-Terra knows: an insult to the doctors is dangerously close to insulting the Nobility. The Lord Mayor Yancey is of relatively low birth, with only Clarkestown and surrounding environs to his name; weakness like this will have other Nobles scenting blood in the water.

It’s not just the killer she has to watch out for. Mercenaries hate competition, and while Clarkestown Academy may not be military, it has its own enforcers: small lizard-rat-dogs en masse, meant for tracking; a brutish squat ape-like thing content to sit and watch a street for hours on end; others she hasn’t seen—none of which will be well-disposed to her.

Luna-Terra’s plan for dealing with all these complications is foolproof: kill the fucker first.

It looks, however, like one of those complications is going to deal with her. She’s being followed.

Luna-Terra doesn’t say much, but if you asked her, and she felt like talking, here’s what she’d say: runners are as good as dead, but she’s been living on borrowed time her whole life. She hasn’t been caught yet, has she?

She turns a corner, to break her tail’s line of sight; discreetly drops a small orange disc to the ground and grinds it through a puddle with her boot as a precaution against being tracked by scent and an invitation, if her pursuer is any good: I know you’re here! Catch me if you can. You can’t.

Three more steps, then a hard right into an alleyway, where she leaps effortlessly onto a dumpster and then up again to a tenement fire escape, both hands clenched tight on the slippery rusted metal. She takes the stairs three at a time.

By the time her pursuer enters the alleyway, she’s one roof over, Borchardt-Luger out.

The figure pulls back its—her—hood, revealing a scruffy head of light brown hair. “Please!” she calls out, like she isn’t expecting to hear anything back. “Luna-Terra? I, uh, need to talk to you!”

Luna-Terra knows better than to trust appearances, but she goes with her gut: something tells her this girl is somebody she needs to look after. She checks her escape routes just to be safe.

“Sure.” she calls back. “Talk from there.”

“I can’t!” says the girl, sounding panicky. “It’s private!”

“Then climb up here.” says Luna-Terra.

“I can’t!” says the girl. “Um. I’m going to see if I can go through the inside?”

Luna-Terra doesn’t bother replying. Tenement houses like this are packed with poorer families; nobody will be watching the stairs. She takes out a cigarette, reconsiders, and slides the pack back into her pocket; munches on a pastry pressed flat by its time in her jacket and throws the paper bag off the roof.

There’s a light knock on the door, and it creaks open. Luna-Terra’s gun is pointed right at the girl’s center of mass.

“Oh god.” says the girl. She raises her hands too fast, and for a moment Luna-Terra prepares herself for a knife or dart. “Oh fuck. Don’t shoot me.”

Luna-Terra isn’t planning on it, but she waves the girl over with her gun, taking the chance to get a closer look.

Geez this kid is young. Luna-Terra’s never really spent time around normal children but this one looks… fourteen? bar some fucked up experimental growth drug or something. She doesn’t fucking know. She’s seen worse shit. Whatever. Whatever age the kid is, she’s shivering, despite her heavy green army jacket and waterproof cloak.

The rain drips off her chin and hair like cold blood off Luna-Terra’s fingers.

“First things first.” says Luna-Terra. “How’d you find me.”

The girl reaches inside her jacket (Which is pretty nice, Luna-Terra thinks: worn but well-maintained), forgetting that she’s being held up at gunpoint, and pulls out something that looks kind of like a flying squirrel with a longer torso, extra set of legs, and eyes that take up the majority of its head.

Luna-Terra’s seen those before. As far as she knows, they never really saw use; they’d been phased out in favor of other projects with less horrendously expensive infrastructure required, but their use case had always mean they weren’t much more than a proof of concept. The team behind them split up, she remembers: some got posted to Crown Capitol, some were snapped up by Academies on the Eastern Seaboard… and one went off to Radham out west.

She’s killed a few, in her time. Of those little leggy things; not the doctors that worked on them.

“Luna-Terra’s a weird name,” says the girl.

Luna-Terra gives her a flat stare, to remind her who’s holding the gun.

“I mean.” says the girl. “My parents named me Juniper. Like the tree.”

“Use Hound or LT while I’m on the job. How’d you get that name.” says Luna-Terra. She’s tired of talking to this kid already. She’s been in Clarkestowne for three days and still hasn’t found where the sapphics hang out. Not that she can’t pull straight girls, but Luna-Terra isn’t in the mood for excuses about sexuality. She needs a drink or three and some time to get acquainted with that skinny bartender with the glasses she saw at the straight bar, the one who gave her a coy sort of smile that Luna-Terra ignored in favor of getting very drunk. Luna-Terra wonders if banging the bartender will get her free alcohol.

“My parents.” says Juniper. She cringes immediately. “Oh uh. You mean yours, right? The Lady Europa.”

Fuck. Luna-Terra needs to be drunk an hour ago. She shoves her pistol back into its holster and settles for a smoke.

“Want one.” she asks Juniper, after her first drag; cigarette held down at the crotch of her fingers.

“No thanks,” Juniper replies.

“These are healthy ones.” says Luna-Terra.

“Really?” says Juniper. “Well, maybe just—“

“Nah.” says Luna-Terra. She takes another breath, feels her lungs fill with smoke; lets it out. Smoke in the rain. She can tell Juniper doesn’t like the smell, and she doesn’t give a damn. “She’s decent, for a Noble, but decent for a Noble is still pretty fucking dangerous.”

“I know.” says Juniper. “She found me.”

“Why the fuck was she looking?” asks Luna-Terra. She really is curious. This girl doesn’t look like the type to stick her neck out for anything.

“Well,” says Juniper, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, “My family moved to Linton Hill [which Luna-Terra has never even heard of] a few years ago—it’s uh, on the rail line to Trimontaine?— and I made a friend there. But some Nobles came through, and then a few days after I found out she disappeared. And I know sometimes that happens, but I didn’t want to lose her, so I just kind of, took off to Trimontaine hoping maybe the police could tell me something?”

“Hm.” says Luna-Terra.

“She’s really important to me.” says Juniper. “I can’t lose her. So I got to Trimontaine, which I had no idea was so huge, but, like, I asked some police anyways and got laughed at? And then the next day when I woke up there was a little card on my hotel room door saying my request for audience was approved, even though I didn’t make one. Or want one. I just, wanted to find out if they took her or not. If she’s dead then she’s dead but I have to know. I have to know. Or I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering.”

“So.” says Luna-Terra. “How is this my problem. Not to question the Lady, bless her withered black soul.”

She takes another drag; exhales smoke slow and steady.

“She said you knew where my best friend went.” says Juniper.

“Nope.” says Luna-Terra. “Never heard of her. My advice? Run. She’ll have people watching your family. Take a train west and never look back.

“… But you can’t, huh. Must be a hell of a friendship.”

Juniper flinches.

“… I have a pretty good guess.” says Luna-Terra. Juniper stutters something about being stupid and thinking it’d be better to show her face that Luna-Terra doesn’t bother correcting. “Put your hood back on and follow me. It’s getting dark.”

She taps the wet ash from her cigarette. It’s going to be a long night.

|||

Luna-Terra is hot. Juniper refuses to discuss certain things, things only Neptune has teased out of her (inch by agonizing painstaking delicious inch), but she has to admit that Luna-Terra is objectively incredibly sexy. Certain feelings she doesn’t like to acknowledge or even think about are stirring, gently stroking at the insides of Juniper’s skin, drawing fingers down her legs and up again, pushing and pulling at her thoughts in ways she’s not comfortable with being a little more comfortable with than she once was, which still isn’t very.

She looks at Luna-Terra rather than let herself boil over. Luna-Terra hasn’t looked back at her once; like she doesn’t really care if she’s coming or not. A few stray locks of messy blond hair have escaped her high collar. She moves with an impossible smooth self-assuredness toward her destination, wherever that is. Her gaze is sharp and heavy. She carries a gun; and climbs up buildings; and has a scar that she hasn’t just gotten new skin for, and if she ever gave Juniper a compliment Juniper would be shocked and not know how to respond and hold it in her heart forever. Also she smokes. Also she’s like six feet tall.  
Juniper only has eyes for Neptune but the thought briefly occurs to her that nobody here has seen her walking with Luna-Terra to wherever she’s going, or even cares. Anything could happen.

Not that she thinks Luna-Terra would. Juniper has only met two other sexual inverts in her life; she can’t even say the words out loud. A woman as beautiful as that could have any man she wanted, probably. Also she’s old enough that she’d probably get arrested. Also she’s old enough that it would be wrong.  
But girls shouldn’t touch each other in those kinds of ways, says a voice in the back of Juniper’s mind. That’s wrong, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be wrong if she did that to you? Wouldn’t you enjoy it? That voice sounds a lot like Neptune. Juniper tries not to listen.

They take a rambling route through a really shitty part of town. After a while, the sparse lights come on: tubes of photoluminescent microfauna shining their characteristic cheap chilly blue.

They stop eventually at a deep-set door. Luna-Terra unlocks it, yanks it open (the frame is warped), and holds it for her, eyes scanning up and down the street. Juniper ducks under her arm and enters the room.

It smells like sex, perfumes, and alcohol. Luna-Terra pulls the cord for the lights (yellow; Juniper’s eyes take a second to adjust) revealing… an absolute mess.  
There’s a small table crammed with edge to edge with bottles and napkins and food wrappings spilling over, onto the barely-visible floor, where they mingle with seemingly random objects: some combs, a set of handcuffs, a chain (not a small one either; each link is the length of one of Juniper’s fingers), some blankets and sheets, and multiple pieces of intimate women’s clothing (some scandalously minimal), which Juniper carefully avoids looking at or drawing any conclusions from.  
She sees some kind of bridle or harness with a conspicuously phallic protrusion, and another with two conspicuously phallic protrusions, and decides to look at the bed instead.

The mattress is bare, covered in stains, and the bedstand is dissembled in one corner.

Juniper is having second thoughts. She turns back to the door.

“Stay.” says Luna-Terra. “And pass me a bottle?”

Juniper makes her way to the table, feeling like she’s eight again: scared enough of falling down a tree well that she refused to walk through the snow, except now the snow is all kinds of junk all over the floor and the tree well is who even knows what weird shit. Luna-Terra takes the bottle without thanking her and uses it to tap nails further into the doorframe. “Tripwire.” she says, by way of explanation.

This just raises more questions. “Why?” asks Juniper, after it becomes clear that Luna-Terra doesn’t feel the need to explain herself any further.

“To stop people from breaking in.” says Luna-Terra. She looks up when she’s done, right at Juniper, and Juniper must have some kind of expression on her face that finally gets something across.

“What did Europa tell you about me?” says Luna-Terra.

Juniper isn’t sure how much to reveal. “She told me you were dangerous, but that you wouldn’t hurt someone like me for some reason? And she knew you’d be here in Clarkestown, when she gave me the uh, this thing. And she said you knew where my friend was.”

“I don’t.” says Luna-Terra. “But I can guess.” Juniper thanks the Lords and Ladies that she sounds nervous enough that Luna-Terra hasn’t picked up on the outright lie she’s told her.

“Did she tell you how dangerous?” says Luna-Terra. From anybody else, that statement would be painfully melodramatic, but Juniper understands it entirely seriously: How dangerous did a fucking Noble tell you I was? (How dangerous is she, really? Is Juniper afraid of her?)

“No.” says Juniper.

“Ah.” says Luna-Terra. “I’m a bounty hunter, here for the serial killer. Pretty dangerous, if you’re the kind of person who kills people. So stop shaking.”

Juniper tries. She ends up making the bed on force of habit and clearing a chair to sit on but she can’t bring herself to do anything about the rest of the room. She has a room herself, on the other side of town, already paid for.

Luna-Terra presses a gun into her hands. “If anyone breaks in, point this at them and pull the trigger.”

She’s probably safer here, even if she doesn’t feel that way.

Luna-Terra lies down with a pillow over her face and her shins and feet coming off the mattress. Juniper clears herself a little space in the corner, with all the blankets, and eventually falls into a fitful restless sleep.

|||

The alarm goes off. Luna-Terra flings her knife at the sound hard enough to stop it; there’s a shriek but she’s reasonably sure she hasn’t hit the kid. Normally she’d sleep in till noon but she does have someone to look after, and a few errands to take care of.

Juniper is already awake, sitting on the chair with one leg pulled up to her chest.

Fuck. Luna-Terra should probably feed her. What do kids eat?

“Hey.” says Juniper. “I waited for the morning rush to die down and went and got us some sandwiches.”

Luna-Terra grunts assent and stumbles off to the bathroom to freshen up. Juniper is still there when she comes out, wax-paper bundles in her lap.  
She hands one to Luna-Terra. It’s still warm.

Luna-Terra opens up the sandwich, rips the edge off a little paper packet of light green powder, and shakes it out onto the fillings before replacing the top piece of bread.

“Is that… Drugs?” asks Juniper.

“Dietary supplements.” says Luna-Terra.

They eat in semi-comfortable silence. Luna-Terra finishes her two sandwiches a little before Juniper’s one, and uses the time to wash them down with alcohol, fill her hip flask, and clean her pistol. She throws her paper on the floor, and Juniper follows her example, even though it makes her uncomfortable.

“Last night, you said you had a best guess?” says Juniper.

“Mmm?” says Luna-Terra.

“About Neptune, I mean. Uh. My friend.” says Juniper.

“So.” says Luna-Terra. “I’m not going to tell you, because it might get me killed. But I’m heading to New Amsterdam after this, and I might run into her.”

Juniper nods. “If people are dying, that’s a lot more important.”

Something about the way she says that reminds Luna-Terra of the best woman she’s ever known. It hurts. For a moment she wants to sweep Juniper up into a hug, but that moment passes quickly.

“Yeah.” she says. “…Let’s go shopping.”

|||

Juniper has never really been one for shopping. She wears her clothes down til they’re almost ragged. Her ideal shopping trip is just ordering the exact same stuff by catalog instead. She’s only really had fun shopping once, with Neptune, in the Roebuck department store two towns over from home.

Neptune knew exactly what she was looking for, or exactly what she didn’t want. The only things she made Juniper try on were things she was sure would fit her—and of course they did. Juniper’s wearing a men’s shirt that Neptune insisted she at least try on right now, under her ever-present jacket.

Shopping with Luna-Terra is a completely different experience. They’re uptown, closer to Clarkestown’s Academy; the buildings here are grown from scratch rather than just patched up with builder’s wood and most of the women out have a manservant, live or stitched, or a custom pet of some kind to carry their bags. Neither of them belong here, but only Juniper seems nervous. Luna-Terra enters almost every store, looks around, and sweeps right back out past her, leaving Juniper to catch the doors before they close on her face and cower under the glares of the bourgeois.

The first shop Luna-Terra spends any appreciable amount of time in is the third tailor they enter. She strides right up to the clerk, shrugs off her long jacket, asks him how the shop is with specialty fabrics, and offers him a very large sum of money to get it cleaned and maintained in a very short amount of time.  
He takes a little magnifying glass and pinches the fabric between his fingers, an interested look on his face. Luna-Terra whispers something in his ear.  
When he agrees, she leaves without another word, Juniper trailing behind her.

Juniper isn’t used to low necklines; Luna-Terra’s plunges down almost to her belly button. She’s not wearing much, actually; just a very thin white collared shirt (also very unbuttoned) and a very visible black bra. She keeps dipping in and out of stores buying whatever she wants, paying no attention to the looks she’s getting.

Juniper ends up carrying some ammunition, some alcohol, and three designer apples that she’s absolutely terrified of bruising; grafted from a tree grown in Crown Capitol, across the ocean. They go somewhere upscale for lunch; the kind of place without a menu so Juniper doesn’t have to worry about ordering but has nothing to hide behind. Luna-Terra, mercifully, has a private table for two reserved. Juniper doesn’t think about this until it’s too late.  
The food is very good. Juniper is on her fourth seahorse-slug thing* on bread (almost done with her meal) when the person Luna-Terra is supposed to be having lunch with walks in.

(they look kind of gross and taste absolutely incredible)*

She’s hot, in a kind of masculine way without being masculine exactly (Juniper knows there must be a word for it but she doesn’t know what that word is). Luna-Terra is also hot in a kind of but not really masculine way; they both have muscles and that’s about all they have in common.

Luna-Terra is pale, sharp, and inscrutable. This woman has short dark curly hair and an open honest face, with cheeks that seem to have kept a little of their baby fat. Luna-Terra’s perfect hair sells her ensemble as passing for high fashion; this woman is wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, genovese denim pants, and enough eyeliner to cover Juniper’s entire face probably, if she spread it out. Luna-Terra glides and slouches incorrigibly; this woman jogs everywhere and holds her back straight.

“Ma’am,” says a flustered waitress, “you don’t have a reservation, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave the premises.”

The woman turns to face her and catches both her hands in hers. “I’m so sorry!” she says. “I’ll leave right away, I promise! But I’m trying to save my friend’s life, and I can’t let you stop me. Can you um, get the check or something for like five minutes?”

“Um. Of course.” says the waitress. She tucks a strand of hair back behind one ear. “If it’s that important. Just don’t get caught, okay?”

“Thank you so much.” says the woman. The waitress scurries off.

Luna-Terra doesn’t bother getting up or saying anything but Juniper can feel her aura of not-giving-a-shit intensify.

“Hey!” says the woman, to Juniper. “Call me M. Don’t worry about giving me your seat, and don’t trust her.”

“Hey Mars.” says Luna-Terra. “Want an apple.”

“I know better than to ever eat anything you give me again.” says M, arms crossed.

“Your loss.” says Luna-Terra. “I bought one for each of us.”

“She did.” says Juniper, feeling like she has to defend her. “Are you sure you don’t want to sit down?”

“What the fuck are you thinking, dragging a kid into this?” says M. “Is she bait? Is she—you know—are you, uh, I really hope she isn’t? Because then I’d have to beat you up.”

“You can try.” says Luna-Terra. “She’s like twelve; she can take care of herself.” Which doesn’t actually answer M’s question.

Juniper resists the age to say no, she’s fifteen actually.

“Whatever.” says M. “Look, LT, I know you won’t believe me, but this is too dangerous. You’re going to get killed.”

“So?” says Luna-Terra.

“So?!” says M. She strides up to Luna-Terra and balls her fists up in her lapels. “So then you’d be dead!!!”

Luna-Terra won’t meet her gaze. She shrugs with one shoulder.

“Fuck you!” says M. She looks like she’s going to cry. “Fucking, stand for something for once in your miserable life! Stand for yourself, even! I don’t care!”

Juniper folds her hands in her lap and pretends she can’t hear any of this.

“…I do.” says Luna-Terra.

"No you fucking don't!” says M. She pulls Luna-Terra up out of her chair; draws her face closer. “And I’ll fight you myself if I—mmmph!”

And then Luna-Terra is kissing her. M’s eyes go wide, then narrow. She pulls back first; spits on the floor and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.  
Luna-Terra headbutts her right in the face so hard that Juniper can hear something crack. Her leg snaps out— and M is on the floor, groaning. Luna-Terra picks up her glass of wine and pours it right over M’s head. She grabs Juniper’s wrist and pulls her along; Juniper is too stunned to object.

When the waitress comes back with the check, they’re long gone.

|||

Juniper tries to pull away twice before Luna-Terra judges they’re far enough away that she can safely let her. She’s gasping for breath. Luna-Terra considers just carrying her around. Sure, it’d be kind of weird, but they’re attracting attention as is.

“What,” says Juniper, “is your problem!”

She doesn’t look angry, like Luna-Terra would have expected. She looks scared and frustrated and disappointed.  
Luna-Terra expected to be yelled at; she always expects to be yelled at, even by kids. She knows how to be yelled at, how to look ashamed and fake contrition and hide her heart away. Not so with disappointment. Only three people have ever been disappointed in her, and they’ve all held pieces of her heart.

So Luna-Terra pulls a little slip of paper out of her pocket.

“It was a handoff.” she says. “Couldn’t risk being spied on.”

“Oh.” says Juniper. “Okay. Uh. Sorry.”

“Nobody who saw that will remember anything but the kiss.” says Luna-Terra. “Trust me on that.”

Juniper is pretending very hard not to listen. Well, that works for Luna-Terra. She has a job for her.

|||

Clarkestown Academy is west of the city proper, climbing up one side of the river valley that leads to what was once Clarkestown Port. Juniper has never really had experience with a proper Academy, and she isn’t looking forward to it, but she likes the colors: white shell-like dome labs with orange-brown crystals that catch the afternoon light, chained together like soap bubbles on a dish; tropical-looking plants with broad light green leaves and fist-sized flowers.

She wanders around until she finds somebody she feels probably won’t be too bothered by her asking directions to Eliot Hall; a white-coated Doctor who orders her attendant stitched to take her after carrying a heavy sealed specimen container into her lab.

Luna-Terra gave her some extremely vague instructions and a letter she’s been forbidden to open. Her hands play nervously at the hem of her shirt but she has a job to do, with lives riding on her success, so she follows the stitched up the hill to the leftmost large pile-cluster.

When she steps through into the dome it’s like walking into another world.

It’s surprisingly large inside, and strangely lit. Almost everything seems to be coated in or made of the same tremendously expensive-looking material; a smooth wood, or stone made to look like wood, set with glittering specks that catch the lights. Juniper feels like she’s in a leafless underwater forest. The desk on the far side of the room looks like it was grown right out of the floor. There are no chairs.

“Hello,” says the receptionist, barely visible beyond the skylight. “What time is your appointment?”

“Um,” says Juniper. “I’m just here to pick something up.”

“Young lady,” says the receptionist, “are you sure you’re in the right place?”

“No,” says Juniper, “I’m not, but I was told to give you this? And have you run class F checks on it.”

“Bring it here then.” says the receptionist. She takes it with two fingers, marks it with a pen, and slides it through a slot in the wall behind her.  
Juniper stands just inside the spotlight, wondering what to do with her hands.

Thirty seconds later, a round older man in a Professor’s black coat enters through a door constructed so seamlessly she hadn’t even realized was there. He places a folded note on the receptionist’s desk without looking at her and smiles toward Juniper, hand extended.

“Professor Walton. I handled the commission myself.”

Juniper, raised to be polite, flubs her curtsy.

Walton—”Professor Walton”—clasps his hands behind his back. “Walk with me,” he says, head turned towards her as he opens the door. Juniper gets the feeling it isn’t a request.

She follows him through another antechamber and down a few sets of stairs to a smaller, more private room. Three of the walls are flat dark wood, single-panel;

the fourth a huge pane of glass, which suffuses the space with steady blue light. Schools of bright silvery fish and darker, stranger things Juniper can’t place the size of swim blurry in the distance.

Two luxurious leather armchairs face each other in the center of the room.

“Please,” says the Professor, his voice not unkind. “Have a seat.”

Juniper sits.

Walton remains standing, fingers steepled and forward-pointing. “I may not be able to say exactly what I mean, but I trust you’ll understand me when I say Clarkestowne Academy understands the value of discretion.”

Juniper nods.

“So.” says the Professor. “Please assure your patron I wouldn’t dream of accepting pay for a job like this, and that everything has all been completely off the record. I’d like to prove myself capable of handling further matters of similar importance.”

He studies Juniper’s face, finding only bewilderment, and goes on: “You won’t find many Professors willing to do all the wetwork themselves. I had only one assistant, my usual; and she’s married to me, so there’s no risk there.”

There’s a brief pause; Professor Walton checks his pocketwatch, completely unfettered. “Janice should be here by now. Ah, there she is, with refreshments. Janice, do you have anything to say to this fine young lady?”

Janice is the receptionist from earlier. Her eyes are downcast, and she’s carrying a tray with two drinks in fluted glasses.

“I’d like to apologize,” she says, “for my earlier behavior. It won’t happen again.”

“No,” says the Professor. “It will not.”

Juniper stammers something about it being fine, that she couldn’t have expected her to know who she was. Janice holds out the drinks.

“Non-alcoholic.” says the Professor. “We ought to keep our wits about us.”

Juniper can hold her alcohol pretty well, actually, (Dad’s been teaching her how for years) but she takes a drink to avoid having to say anything. She’s pleasantly surprised: it’s fruity and delicious, even if she can’t name any of the flavors.

“This…” she says, “is very good.”

“One of my students grew the cultivar;” says the Professor. “I’m glad it’s to your taste.”

Juniper drains the glass despite herself. Professor Walton finishes soon after, beckons Janice over, and whispers something in her ear. She leaves the room.

“And now,” says the Professor, “To business. I mean you no offense when I say that you may not know what precisely is happening here; if you do I hope you’ll take it as a compliment. I do have a conscience, and I’d rest a little less easy if a girl my daughter’s age wasn’t caught up in this sordid business.

“Some things,” says Juniper, “are better off unsaid?”

“Some people,” says the Professor, “might be better off incapable of saying. No, don’t look at me like that; I’m not threatening you. It’d be no use. Janice! The stitched.”

Janice is back, with somebody else at her heel. Walton snaps his fingers twice and the second figure snaps to attention, back perfectly still.

Juniper’s seen stitched men before. A few people had them in Linton Hill; but those were made for heavy labor, with strong arms and broad shoulders, their stitches visible where doctors hadn’t bothered to cover them up. This one is a woman, clothed in only a simple shift. In the water-light, her skin is the same color as anyone else’s. All that gives her—it—away is its glassy eyes and ramrod posture.

“We’ll get something to cover it up,” says Professor Walton, “but I thought you might want to inspect what you aren’t buying.”

Juniper has no choice. Janice and the Professor are both watching her, and she tries to watch the stitched in that same clinical way. It’s a corpse made to look like a person, she tells herself; there’s nothing indecent or inhuman about it.

And it isn’t inhuman, exactly. Neptune used to mock people with more money than taste who’d bought twenty-year old faces all exactly the same, but this is different. If she’d thought about it, Juniper would have expected a breathtaking work of art from a Black Coat Professor: smooth flawless skin, perky breasts, exactly the right amount of posterior— but this is a work of art in a completely different way. Its body looks lived-in, like any woman Juniper might ever have walked past.

Juniper shivers. Walton must have mistaken her reaction, because he chuckles, proud of himself and a little relieved. “It wasn’t complicated in terms of theory, but the coelomic work required a very steady hand. Don’t worry, it’s all been discreetly sourced and it’ll last as long as your patron needs.”  
Juniper makes herself thank him, accepts the little envelope of key phrases programmed into the stitched’s brain, “for your patron; and if they decide to contact me again my details are in there too,” shakes his hand and curtsies again, correctly this time, and leaves, stitched behind her in a yellow raincoat.

|||

Juniper takes the route back that Luna-Terra scribbled on a scrap of paper, crossing and looping back over her own path from landmark to landmark. She hates how the stitched woman follows her; hates how normal it is to have a stitched escort here. She distracts herself by looking up and around, wondering if she’ll see a flash of blond or the edge of a black coat on a building or through a window.

She never does.

Luna-Terra is in the room when she gets there with her black jacket back on, guns dissembled on the mattress. Juniper can’t tell if she even left.

“Hey.” says Juniper. “Can we, talk?”

“Go ahead,” says Luna-Terra.

“I mean, somewhere else,” says Juniper.

Luna-Terra takes a second to glance at the card of key phrases and whispers one into the stitched woman’s ear. Juniper looks away, embarrassed; the fact that the stitched doesn’t react makes her even more uncomfortable.

“Follow me,” says Luna-Terra, and walks out the door.

They walk for a little while, to a nicer part of town where the buildings aren’t actively crumbling, and the builder’s wood on brick or stone looks like it was built to be there rather than slapped on.

“Here.” Luna-Terra says. “Count down from twenty,” and disappears around a corner.

At four she’s thrown her a looped rope

Luna-Terra hauls her up easily, with that same blank look she always has; and then she sits down, legs straddling the ridge. Juniper perches, knees to chin.

“Wow,” says Juniper. “You’re, really heavily augmented, aren’t you?”

Luna-Terra gives her a look.

“Sorry.” says Juniper. “It’s just. I’ve never really seen a lot of Academy stuff. Before these past few days, I mean. “

“Your accent says North Central,” says Luna-Terra. “Bet they’ve still got churches there.”

“…You shouldn’t joke about that kind of stuff,” says Juniper, and Luna-Terra narrows her eyes just enough to let Juniper know that she doesn’t give a shit, but in a not offensive way. “We have voltaics and stitched, even out in the middle of nowhere, but they were like, just farmhands? I mean, I didn’t know stitched could be, like that.”

“That well made?” asks Luna-Terra.

“No,” says Juniper. “I mean, that too. But…it’s different when it’s a woman.”

“… It’s not a woman.” says Luna-Terra. “It’s a thing dressed up like a woman. Like a doll, or a shop window mannequin. A table skirt.”

“Ok.” says Juniper. A little while, and then:

“It just, makes me grateful we have the Crown, you know?”

“Hmm.” says Luna-Terra; but she kind of hums it. Juniper, emboldened, continues: “Because otherwise the Academies could do whatever they wanted.”

“You think they don’t already do that?” says Luna-Terra, with no malice. Like it’s an ordinary question. “They print fake women like newspapers.”

It’s perversely reassuring, having somebody tell her that she’s wrong; that she’s naive. The content, if not the tone, reminds Juniper of Neptune.

“I know,” she says, a little more vehemently than she means to. Thinking about Neptune hurts.

Luna-Terra doesn’t seem to mind but she apologizes anyways, just to be sure.

“Sorry.”

“Yeah,” says Luna-Terra. She fishes in her pockets for a pack of cigarettes; takes one for herself, pauses a second, and extends the box to Juniper, one protruding.  
Juniper takes it.

“…Wrong end.” says Luna-Terra.

Juniper flushes.

“Nah.” says Luna-Terra. “Filterless.” She flicks her lighter open, runs it along her pants to ignite it and holds it out; laughs as Juniper sputters and grimaces. They stay up there for a little while, just watching the street and the clouds and the sky.

|||

The moon is half full, or half empty; half-dark half-bright half-old half-new. Half-visible too. Patchy cloud cover begets patchy rain, and the gutters run glinting with moonlight.

Luna and Terra, Heaven and Earth. It’s some astrological thing, probably, a relic of the days when the Crown and Academy promoted alternative mythologies, before the Church was crushed. She’s always liked the tension inherent in her name: in the idea that she’s pulled two ways, in the poetry of her patchwork life.  
Now, though, her focus is perfectly singular.

Three cloudy days in a row have left Clarkestown’s bioluminescent lighting weak, but that doesn’t matter to Luna-Terra. If she weren’t still as a stitched she might shudder from anticipation. She relishes hunting with a joy that she firmly considers to be pride in a job well done. And why shouldn’t she have that?

She’s lying on that same alley fire escape where Juniper found her the day before, invisible in her coat in the strange shadows.

Hurried footsteps echo from the main street. Something that looks like a girl in a yellow raincoat pauses conspicuously outside the mouth of the alleyway, head moving back and forth twice before it enters for the fourth time tonight.

This is it, Luna-Terra knows. Every misheard remark and awkward silence of her everyday life is worth it for ears that can hear the second set of footsteps; somebody masking each footfall with one of their target’s.

Her quarry is skilled, then. Good. There’s nothing more satisfying.

The stitched crouches just where and how she posed it: crouching, side pressed to the dumpster, expanding and contracting chest muscles so that it looks like it’s breathing hard.

It’s a convincing illusion. Somebody without Luna-Terra’s upbringing might be uncomfortable.

But no part of this tableau hesitates.

The serial killer stalks forward, knife in hand and shadow long before him, no longer caring to hide his footsteps. The stitched shudders, hands pressed to its face in a parody of fear. Luna-Terra is a bullet in the chamber; hammer cocked, trigger fingered.

She swallows her saliva and watches.

There’s a sound as the stitched is kicked against the metal dumpster, and a smaller, sadder sound as it’s kicked again, out towards the alleyway center. It collapses, spasming face down in a puddle.

He places his foot on the back of its head—

—something is wrong. Luna-Terra’s prey instinct, something she hasn’t gotten any real use out of in years, is screaming: some detail she hasn’t noticed means its all going tits up and she needs to run, NOW—

That foot presses down with a sickening crunch-squelch—

—but she chokes that impulse down. She’s already taken her single step on the fire escape, vaulted the railing to plunge like a thunderbolt, knife aimed for his spine—

—( _fuck_ , she realizes)—

  
The blade sinks deep into his shoulder. Two and a half stories of momentum send him to her hands and knees, and her rolling off over the remains of the stitched woman’s head, streaking her coat with blood and gray matter. She fires twice, from the hip, before she’s stopped moving; hits twice—but neither shot has enough stopping power.

He’s inhumanly fast. The third shot goes high, as his hand wraps around hers, crushing it around her gun.

But so is she; and even if he’s faster, she’s already made her move. Her knife draws a gash between the stitched’s ribs and a jet of dark fluid pressurized by its repurposed arteriovascular system catches him under the hood, right in the face.

Her left hand is mangled, forced into the shape of her pistol grip. Luna-Terra thinks she’ll have to get that fixed, eventually, but it’ll still do the trick—  
His hands close around her leg and whip her right into the side of the dumpster, fast enough that she only barely wraps her hands around her head in time. The metal is thin enough that it crumples around her.

Lords and fucking Ladies it hurts. He plucks her gun from her fingers and tosses it out of range.

But Luna-Terra’s known enough pains that she can push past this one. That purple oily serum is soaking the stitched woman’s clothing and seeping down between the cobblestones. It’ll be in his bloodstream soon, and then she wins.

So she just has to hold on. She screams in pain; it’s not an act, but she isn’t as vulnerable as that scream might imply, and moves, ears still ringing; is shoved into the alley wall brow-first by a hand on her neck; the other twisting her arm behind the small of her back to force her into place. He pushes just an inch. The message is clear: her face is going to be grated like cheese on the bricks.

Fine then. Her face is useless anyway. Luna-Terra dislocates her elbow, lifts her feet against the wall and shoves herself backwards, pivoting in midair. Combined with the slippery gunk on the ground, it’s enough to knock him off his feet. She knows what to do from there.

“Very good,” says her assailant. Luna-Terra doesn’t bother responding. He’s lying flat on his back, her knife pressed up against his neck, and he’s completely relaxed. Whatever. He’s sick in the head.

She’d been almost reminded of something she doesn’t like to think about, like she was standing inches from a train speeding past, reeling in its wake.

“I said,” he says, “very good.”

“… I heard,” says Luna-Terra. “Thank you.”

It’s misting, just a little. “Hey.” calls Luna-Terra. “Restraints.”

There’s a shaky “Ok” from up on one of the roofs, and Juniper throws them down, in three separate loads. The heavy chains clink on stone. Luna-Terra pulls the closest set closer with her foot.

“What was the liquid?” asks her captive.

“Mild hallucinogen.” says Luna-Terra.

“Ah,” he replies. “Unlucky for you then,” and _twists_ inside his skin fast enough to throw her off.

Luna-Terra realizes what she’d already known on some level; what set off all her alarms: none of the bodies had their heads crushed. He’d known when he’d followed the stitched in.

His hood came off when he shot upward, muscles unfolding in ways they shouldn’t to bring him to his true height. She takes a good look at his face, though she hardly needs to.

Twinkling blue eyes, ageless fae features and a slim, preternaturally statuesque build.

And he has her pinned. He could snap her wrist like an ice lolly stick, if he wanted, or crush her skull with one hand. Probably. It’s not a bet she’d like to ever test.

Sitting atop her is the Lord fucking Mayor of Clarkestown. A bona fide Noble, even if he’s lower-tier. Even the lowliest Baronet, as Luna-Terra well knows, is augmented to the point of untouchability.

All the fight goes out of her body. Luna-Terra knows when she’s beaten, and when she needs to be the most careful. “My Lord.” she says.

A lock of perfect chestnut hair falls in front of his perfect face. His voice is melodious, and probably loaded with command harmonics for experiments besides.

“You needn’t kneel. Given your profession, you must understand how tiresome begging becomes.”

“My Lord.” says Luna-Terra. “I would explain my actions.”

“Time,” says the Lord Mayor, “is not so easily bought. You wanted a bounty, which I provided. I wanted a fight, which I received. That transaction is over.”

He snaps her arm—no fancy twists, just slightly angled pressure expertly applied. The crunch is audible. Luna-Terra spasms on the ground. Nearby the stitched woman lies still, the last sparks flickering on the stump of metal spine protruding from her neck.

“My Lord,” says Luna-Terra. “I could do you,” his hand moves an inch lower on her arm, and crushes again as she continues, “a great service.”

“You think I’ll spare you for a halfway decent fight? ” says the Lord Mayor.

Luna-Terra lets out a sad little exhalation of an almost-laugh.

“The wage of treason,” he continues, “is death.”

An inch lower. Another snap.

“Die fighting and I’ll give that girl on the roof a few drops of your hallucinogen before I kill her.”

“My Lord,” says Luna-Terra, “she knows nothing—”

“She’s within my demesne, abetting conspiracy against a Noble. Unless you’d have me believe you didn’t try honestly to kill me?”

His voice remains light, but there’s a dark gleam in his eyes.

“My Lord,” Luna-Terra keeps hers lowered, “do as you see fit.”

There’s a sharp pain across her face. He’s slapped her, nails raking her skin like knives. Luna-Terra thinks about the past; bares her neck rather than face him again, letting bloody saliva trickle out of the corner of her mouth.

“The girl had an accent. She came with you, didn’t she. Perhaps I’ll kill her first and see if that motivates you.”

“As you wish, my Lord,” says Luna-Terra. “It is your right. But she was sent by the Lady Europa.”

“For who.” says the Lord Mayor. Luna-Terra knows better than to answer a rhetorical question. He studies her face for a moment.

“My bracelet, my Lord.” says Luna-Terra.

He switches the hand on her throat; rips open her other sleeve. There’s a brilliant stone there, set in a shackle-thick band.  
“Cooper’s-Pity. I’m surprised your mistress allows this behavior. You're in poor shape, aren't you. A stray?”

Luna-Terra smiles gamely.

“Go home then. Leave the girl.”

“My Lord,” says Luna-Terra, “Allow her to serve your purposes.”

The Lord Mayor places the nail of his index finger right at the join between Luna-Terra’s eye and socket.

“She’s an expendable pawn. Leave her on the board, my Lord, for the Lady I serve, and I’ll do everything in my power to use her to grant you entrance to her Vernal Fête.”

She can feel blood welling up through that tiny cut. Her body betrays her; tightens her muscles underneath him (it’s been too long since anyone has been strong enough to make her stay still).

She pauses, unsure if what she’s saying is even worth it. Maybe that’s what the Lord Mayor seizes on.

“Clarkestown accepts your proposal,” its Lord Mayor says, “conditional upon you, Chevalier Apollo, trying your very hardest to kill me. Surely somebody with your background can present more of a challenge.”

“I never won,” says Luna-Terra, sotto voce. “Not once.”

The Lord Mayor sticks her right between the ribs for her impertinence. Not deep enough to kill, just deep enough to feel. He’s still dripping wet and his knife was dripping too, and now the hallucinogen is tingling inside her and the knife kicks with each one of her heartbeats.

“Try harder.” he says.

“Yes, my Lord,” says Luna-Terra, automatically.

|||

Juniper doesn’t dare watch. She claps her hands over her ears and crouches down until she hears a gunshot.

Thank the Lord King it’s just a signal.

Luna-Terra is standing by the time she’s down to ground level, one hand clasped around her midsection. Her hair is wild and her eyes are hard.

“We need to go. Now.”

“To a doctor?” says Juniper.

“North,” says Luna-Terra. “New Amsterdam.”


End file.
